Part I, Book 4, Chapter 2
First Sketch of Two Shady Characters
We’re introduced to the Thénardiers here, who are terrible and yet hilarious people in a different way from how they’re terrible and hilarious in the show.
Hugo describes them as being of:
[T]hat bastard class between the so-called middle class and the so-called lower class, which is made up of crass people who have come up in the world and clever people who have gone down, and combines some of the faults of the latter with nearly all the vices of the former.
Faint whiffs of moral classism aside, this is such a trenchant description, and one whose modern corollary, imho, is what I think of as the “grifter class,” which at this point aspires to the fame, lifestyle, and power of the 1%.
Both were most highly susceptible to the sort of hideous progress that occurs in the development of evil. There are souls like lobsters, continually retreating into the shadows, retrogressing rather than advancing through life, using experience to add to their monstrosity, becoming ever more wicked and ever more imbued with an intensifying foulness.
“Souls like lobsters!” This feels like lobster slander. But, again, this is a great description of a type of person who not only still exists, but continues to plague us in so many different forms.
Onto one of the more hilarious (to me) details about these terrible people: Madame Thénardier (do we ever learn her first name?) is a big reader of trashy romance novels, which, you do you, madame, not going to shame you for that. The part that’s hilarious is that as a result of her taste in literature, she names her daughters—Éponine and Azelma—after characters from these books. This is 100% like Twilight fans naming their daughters Renesmee and I can’t get over how funny this is.
Victor Hugo then goes on a pretty funny tangent about this era of “first-name anarchy.” He notes the way “the ‘distinguished’ name is given to the common man and the rustic name to the aristocrat” which, again, is such a modern-day thing! You have wealthy and bougie coastal families giving their kids traditional, relatively plain names (the most popular baby names in 2024 were Liam, Noah, Olivia, and Emma), while parents of, ah, what Hugo calls “the bastard class” cook up all sorts of fanciful names with torturous spellings (“Kayleigh,” anybody?)
Once again, nothing new is actually new. I do think there is some terrific irony in the idea that Éponine was meant to be an example of a trashy romantic name and, thanks to thousands of angsty teen girls imprinting on the musical, Éponine is now considered a tragic romantic heroine in her own right. Look at what Hugo hath wrought!
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